[thelist] mailto: long body text

[Tyme]

Whew! Finally a response on topic.  ;-)

----- Original Message -----
From: Robert Goodyear <rob_goodyear at yahoo.com>
To: <thelist at lists.evolt.org>
Sent: Tuesday, August 14, 2001 5:30 PM
Subject: Re: [thelist] mailto: long body text


> I have a couple of (relevant) questions for you.
>
> 1. Can we see a code snippet?

TYME} Well, I tried various things.  Just ditched them all when my curious
enthusiasm gave way to my sleepiness.  I was pretty blurry-eyed at 5:00 AM,
but here are the things that I did try (with slightly different versions):

1.  Stored the letter as a string (ASP) something like:
     strBody = "Dear Mr. SoAndSo:" & vbCrLf
     strBody = strBody & "I am writing to you because..." & vbCrLf
     strBody = strBody & "...Sincerely,"

     Then: <a
mailto:href="mailto:tyme at no-pun.com?subject=Veterans_Park_Condos&body=<%=str
Body%>"

2.  Same as above except used <%=Server.HTMLEncode(strBody)%>; also tried
<%=Server.URLEncode(strBody)%>

3.  strBody = "Dear%20Mr.%20SoAndSo:%A0D0I&20am..."  (courtesy of a encoder
utility)

4.  Etc.

> 2. How are you breaking the paragraphs?

TYME} Tried several ways:
1.  & vbCrLf (ASP method)
2.  %A0%D0
3.  Not at all.  (Tried it as one big string, just for testing.)

> 3. Isn't a URL query limited to 256 characters? Maybe mailto's method is
considered as
> such.

TYME} My understanding, for ASP querystrings there is no limit.  I did a
quick source to try to confirm.  Here is one response to that question:

"Actually there has always been a limit of just over 4000 chars since as
far back as I can remember.  I did some testing, and found the answer with
at least my version of IE5.5 there is a max of 2053 characters which can be
contained in a querystring.  Otherwise the link just stops working."

TYME} And, of course, the reason for my original post was that I had not
been able to find the answer to that as it relates specifically to a mailto:
body value.

> 4. So does the body break cleanly after the first paragraph or arbitrarily
in that area?

TYME} Didn't thoroughly tested that.

> Have you done a chracter count on the resulting truncated email? Is it
some base-2 number
> like 256 or 1024? (Or, perhaps more telling: 256-(length of the HREF
string))









> --- Tyme <nopun at bellsouth.net> wrote:
> > So, basically, you do not know the answer.  :-)    Regardless of the
method
> > that I end up with, I would like to know exactly what the limitations of
> > mailto: are, if only for curiousity's sake rather than future reference.
> > That was my question, afterall.